SonicWALL Protects Startups at Tech Accelerator RocketSpace

SonicWALL abates user issues before they become problems and in fact, has optimized our performance. We’ve taken the time we used to spend on monitoring the firewall and put it into business initiatives, said Mike Bowie, director of IT, RocketSpace.

San Jose, CA (PRWEB) May 03, 2012

• RocketSpace replaces its Cisco® infrastructure with SonicWALL® to gain performance, enhanced Quality of Service and Application Intelligence, Control and Visualization.

With a growing number of tech and new media startup businesses under one roof, San Francisco-based technology accelerator RocketSpace was faced with the mounting challenge of maintaining an open, yet secure IT environment for its customers. Operating out of a 42,000 square-foot facility in San Francisco’s South of Market district, it supports approximately 400 end users from over 120 companies. As a technology accelerator, RocketSpace needed to accommodate its customers’ wide range of businesses, highly diverse infrastructure requirements and bandwidth demands. Since many of RocketSpace’s clients depend on high-bandwidth applications such as Skype®, BitTorrent and VoIP to conduct their businesses, the company needed the ability to prioritize high-latency traffic by application, rather than implement controls and restrictions by port and protocol. At the same time, RocketSpace needed to protect its customers and the network against malware, virus intrusions and abuse of bandwidth.

Prioritizing traffic in an open IT environment
RocketSpace recognized that SonicWALL’s Application Intelligence, Control and Visualization functionality could directly enable consistent quality of service (QoS) for its customers, so that they had the best level of performance possible for business-critical applications. This was particularly critical for bandwidth-intensive applications such as Skype, which RocketSpace’s startup clients rely upon to conduct meetings with remote colleagues.

Previously, RocketSpace had used a Cisco firewall, but had outgrown its capacity. As part of the evaluation, RocketSpace considered solutions from Palo Alto Networks® and Check Point®. In looking at Palo Alto Networks, RocketSpace found that the web interface lacked adequate web responsiveness. They also discovered SonicWALL offered them more functionality with three years of licensing at a significantly lower cost than Palo Alto Networks, with only one year of licensing. After evaluating Check Point, RocketSpace concluded that the solution required substantial overhead and was simply not feature-rich enough to meet its needs. With SonicWALL, the company was able to pair the High Availability licenses, whereas it would have had to license each module twice with Check Point.

“SonicWALL abates user issues before they become problems and in fact, has optimized our performance. We’ve taken the time we used to spend on monitoring the firewall and put it into business initiatives,” said Mike Bowie, director of IT, RocketSpace. “When other products and vendors failed to stack up during our evaluation process, our partner, BEAR Data Solutions, was extremely responsive and without hesitation recommended we bring SonicWALL to the party. BEAR Data’s rapid response, along with the speed at which SonicWALL was able to bring in and deploy an evaluation platform only added to the credibility of the platform and our trust in both companies."

Enhanced QoS for business-critical services
To prioritize its traffic and improve QoS for its customers, RocketSpace implemented two NSA E5500 Next-Generation Firewalls in High Availability (HA) featuring SonicWALL Application Intelligence, Control and Visualization. The solution gave RocketSpace the ability to successfully allocate available bandwidth to its client QoS pool and granularly break it down by application. As a result of the increased visibility into its network, RocketSpace has been able to respond to issues proactively, and in turn, optimize performance for its customers and their businesses.

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About SonicWALL, Inc.
Guided by its vision of Dynamic Security for the Global Network, SonicWALL develops advanced intelligent network security and data protection solutions that adapt as organizations evolve and as threats evolve. Trusted by small and large enterprises worldwide, SonicWALL solutions are designed to detect and control applications and protect networks from intrusions and malware attacks through award-winning hardware, software and virtual appliance-based solutions. For more information, visit http://www.sonicwall.com/.

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RocketSpace provides shared office space and business services for tech and new media companies. Operating out of a 42,000 square-foot facility in San Francisco’s South of Market district, it supports approximately 400 end users from 90 companies. RocketS